So, someone who is really special bought me this shirt for a present. And I wear it, but only rarely out of the house, because someone else who is really special and helpfully monitors my clothing has told me that it’s scary, and I might not want to wear a scary shirt (depending on the situation), because people will notice it, and I typically opt for a low-key public demeanor.

But today I was behind on laundry, and needed a shirt to go to the gym, and this one actually was just about the last clean one in the dresser, so I threw it on.

As a result I learned three things:

1. My fashion advisor is correct. People noticed the shirt. Two people, one of whom I’ve never spoken to before, approached me to ask about it.

2. It is harder than I would have expected to explain what this shirt means. I managed to explain that a) it was the Darcy character from a modern-day adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, b) he appeared in a show on YouTube, and c) the show was called the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. I didn’t get to explain anything about costume theater, or do my impression of Ashley doing Lizzie doing Daniel doing Darcy being a robot, or provide any explanation of how the word “malfunction” figures into this. Nor did I get to say anything about the John Green “pizza” shirt, and how this shirt is referencing that shirt. Really, I haven’t felt like such a failure in a long time. My advice: If you’re going to wear this shirt in public, spend some time beforehand thinking through how to explain it.

3. Selfies are harder to take than I would have thought. I tried to take a selfie in the mirrored wall at the gym to document my actual wearing of the shirt, but the photo came out blurry and lame. Still, I know echojardini, at least, has commented on the rarity of me-selfies, so despite the crappiness of the actual photo, here you go:

This entry was posted by jbc on Wednesday, April 30th, 2014 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Tumblr.
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